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Comment by aikah | Hacker News Reader

> because $1299 is a fortune

Yes, for some people it is a serious investment.

You might win 500k or more a year, good for you, you are successful. But for people who have kids who will have to go to University ,even at 100k a year , $1300 isn't a small amount of money.

If you think people buy laptops like they buy candies well you're a privileged man, and again I wish you the best,but that's not the reality for most of us.

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It's not even so much about it being affordable but rather how much it costs relative to other devices on the market. $1300 is a pretty high price point for a laptop and in that range you're competing with high-end notebooks like Apple. A Chromebook fits a niche for lightweight web-browsers, but I'm not prepared to spend $1300 for a notebook built solely to surf the net.

The thing runs linux. Like if you ever wanted a linux laptop this is for you. I just bought a toshiba cb2, and with crouton installed it's one of the best laptops I think I've ever owned (for the price).

All my laptops run Linux. Two of them came with Linux preinstalled. Two of them came with Windows preinstalled. All four had the preinstalled OS overwritten by my Linux distro of choice. So what they came with isn't really that important. (Granted, if something comes with Linux then that saves you the step of making sure all the hardware has Linux support before you buy it.)

(Random and probably a little minor) But what about those keyboards? How about those Ctrl and alt keys? Have both on each side? Actually in the same order, and spaced well for programming / emacs? That's the reason I hate my Mac pro so much, and I haven't seen a win based keyboard doing much better. The CB key layout is the best I know of.

Well, my current ASUS laptop (about $700 ~3 years ago, including the Swedish 25% VAT, Windows preinstalled) has so far worked almost flawlessly with Linux. My bottom row is Ctrl Fn Super Alt Space AltGR Menu Ctrl. Some keys are a smaller than on a full-size keyboard, but everything (except for home/end/pg/...) is in its usual spot and it works absolutely fine for me (I'm primarily writing in IntelliJ or Vim though, not Emacs).

spot on my friend, I do better than most, and still have to budget for a purchase like that.

what this does mean for me, is that older models will come down in price and become much more affordable. might even be able to pick up last years for $2-400 on ebay.

This laptop is a niche device, it will not appeal to persons who want the most notebook for the price.

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